Life, death and money

The great political realignment

Regardless of cause, it has arrived. The great political realignment is here. The left parties of Australia (Labor), UK (Labour), US (Democrats) and Canada (Liberals) no longer represent the people that they were originally formed to represent, that is, the wage earners. Instead, the wage earners now support the right of centre parties. There was a hint of this during the premiership of John Howard in Australia over a decade ago – Howard’s battlers were the trades workers in particular. This realignment has emerged in spectacular fashion with the election of Donald Trump, Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and the recent chastisement of Justin Trudeau, all in the space of three short years. Add to that the allied cause of Brexit and it has been a magnificent three years. Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand should heed the warning signs, but I doubt that she will.

While gaining a new section of community as voters, the conservative parties have not lost many of their traditional voters. The inner city wealthy elites are the single most obvious group splintering. They are sufficiently wealthy not to feel the adverse effects of vanity policies relating to climate action, refugees and the renewable economy. Their votes are in some measure, but not large, splitting to labour and green parties. The young, the students, the millenials increasingly seem unaware of the practical meaning of socialism and communism, so their votes are splitting to labour – perhaps they were always so inclined. But there is a clear sign of push back against over powering statism, against governments and bureaucrats and against massive proposed increase in taxes to fund ever expanding government programs.

In Europe, eastern in particular, the Poles, the Czechs and the Hungarians are very suspicious of the central power accumulation by the EU, which is on a mission to form a supra-national government. Political parties that support and promote national sovereignty will do well at the ballot box. Brexit will be a huge blow to the EU project – Britain’s economy (and hence contribution to the EU budget) was equal to the aggregate of the smallest 18 nations in the EU. The project is in trouble.

And yet, the leftist parties make things worse for themselves. They say the voters are stupid or populist, deplorable, xenophobic, racist etc. They say their policies are popular but evil corporations and Rupert Murdoch conspire to deceive the public. Guardian correspondent, George Monbiot, says that the evil corporate types have discovered the secret formula for deceiving the public. (George is not known affectionately as Moonbat for nothing – ed note). They dig deeper holes for themselves. They draw the barricades closer and tighter around themselves. They shout the same messages in louder voices. I expect that saner heads within the left parties can see this. Still, the policies don’t change. In all of the Anglosphere, there is no conservative party that I consider to be a proper conservative party. But in every case, each one is vastly preferable to what the left is putting up as an alternative government.

Remarkably, the conservatives now represent the wage earners better than the labour parties, and the people know it. I predict that in five years time, Boris Johnson will have just been reelected for his second term, Donald Trump will be at the end of his second term and about to hand over to Nikki Haley, Scott Morrison will be part way through his second term, Jacinda and Justin will be forgotten and Jeremy Corbyn will still not know how he engineered UK Labour’s worst election result in over 70 years.